A very active part of the sun, which is known as Active Region 2242, emitted a gigantic solar flare late on Friday evening (19 December) and this was caught by NASA.
This is the most delicate picture of the star that NASA has ever taken. Typically NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscpic Telescope Array) looks at black holes and other objects put far away in the earth’s planetary group. However, this time, the telescope has effectively caught a picture of the sun’s high-energy X-ray flashes.
Since NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recognized the massive solar flare, it has kept a close and consistent watch on it.
The flare was powerful to the point that it created power blackouts in different parts of the Earth including South Pacific and Australia.
Specialists say that the region is vast and complex, and more radio power outages could about to happen. The flare was a part of an active week of sun storms. One more active sunspot area had made two moderate-sized flares a week ago before the latest flare.
As per NASA, the less intense sun storms come under the category of Class M, while the stronger ones like the one noticed on Friday are categorized as Class X. M-class flares are around a 10th 0f the size of X-class flares, however they can make stunning displays of the Northern Lights. With more M-class flares expected this weekend, individuals in a few areas may get a dynamite Christmas light show from geomagnetic storms activated by the flares.
The majority of the radio blackout that happened from Friday’s X1.8 solar flare was in Australia and the South Pacific.
The sun is on an 11-year space weather cycle that has its tops. We are at present in the crest period of Solar Cycle 24.
Sunspots are momentary phenomena on the sun that seem darker than encompassing areas, which needs to do with amassing of the magnetic field that result in a lower surface temperature. They frequently show up in sets, with one sunspot having the inverse magnetic polarity as the other. They are ordinarily liable of lunar flares because of their extremely magnetically active areas.
A solar flare is an expansive energy release that can be equal to 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT. In contrast, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were identical to only three megatons.
Electrons, ions, and molecules are catapulted by means of the flare from the corona of the sun into the breadths of space, ordinarily arriving at the Earth a day or two later.
